


What Little Girls are Made Of

by Fallynleaf



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Transgender, Transgender Christine Chapel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-18 10:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallynleaf/pseuds/Fallynleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Christine Chapel tells a complete stranger her life's story while she's adjusting her makeup in the women's restroom in a bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Little Girls are Made Of

**Author's Note:**

> Written over a year ago before Into Darkness. This was spawned initially from a joke on tumblr that was made during the speculation following the initial casting announcement that Benedict Cumberbatch was going to be in the next Reboot film. People decided that, obviously, he was going to be playing Nurse Chapel, of course!
> 
> I turned the joke into an actual fic out of bitterness after the reveal that Benedict Cumberbatch would be playing Khan. 
> 
> Needless to say, it quickly became my legitimate headcanon for nu!Chapel and nu!Rand
> 
> [Phasers and Pheromones](http://archiveofourown.org/works/878607) is somewhat of a follow-up fic for this.

Chapel touched the corner of her eye and collected the tear before it could tremble down her cheek and smear her makeup. Raucous voices echoed in the hallway, made loader and looser with the addition of alcohol, but they faded into the background as Chapel gazed into the mirror and tried to clear her mind in the hopes that it’d clear away her tears, too.

“You look fine, you know,” a voice said, directed at her. In her surprise, Chapel dropped the mascara and it fell into the sink, clawing black streaks into the dirty porcelain. She saw a woman in the mirror smiling at her from an adjacent sink. The woman had an elaborate woven updo that Chapel stared at in wonder before she remembered herself and quit staring.

“Oh, thank you,” Chapel said. She retrieved her mascara and capped it hastily.

“You reapplied it twice. I thought I’d save you from taking the time to apply it again. So, is it some guy who’s got you into this state? If so, he’s a real jerk, and you should leave him.”

Chapel said nothing. Her fingers were curled around the counter, too tight. _Roger Korby, laughing with his friends and clasping an empty glass in hand, the alien wine it once contained long downed. “A perfect woman, hmm… I’m always partial to shapely brunettes.”_ Chapel took in a breath. She forgot the woman beside her. There was only her form in the mirror and Roger’s words cutting into her thoughts.

Chapel’s hand went up. She touched her blonde hair, meticulously styled as always. Chapel always liked looking pretty and neat, her body smooth and free of hair but for her head, with makeup easing all of the irregularities and imperfections out of her skin.

Her body was shapely, but it had all of the wrong shapes. Chapel touched her chest, where she had no breasts. She felt her throat, where her voice rumbled too deep. Her tears had long dried.

“I’ve been told that I have a habit of falling too easily and for all the wrong men,” she said. The woman was still there, waiting.

In a couple months, Chapel thought Roger would propose to her. She thought she’d accept.

“Sorry to dump all of my problems on you like this.” Chapel sighed.

“Don’t be. This bar is a damn bore. This conversation is the most interesting thing that’s happened to me yet.”

“Oh, I don’t believe I’ve gotten your name yet.”

“Janice. Janice Rand. And you are…?”

“I was born Chris Chapel, after my father. But I go by Christine.”

“So, Christine, what’s your life’s story?”

“You really want to hear it? From the beginning? There’s not much to tell. The Narada incident left my mother newly widowed and pregnant at the same time. She gave birth to a boy, who she hoped would lead our little family through hardships and trials, who’d get a nice, respectable job on land far away from any starships. What she’d really gotten was a little girl.” Chapel trailed off into silence. _That girl became the glue that held them together. She’d dreamed of healing people, and of space, and her mom had disapproved, as she disapproved of the girl’s gender, but never enough to deny her either of them._

“I can read into that pause of yours a much greater story than you claimed,” Janice said. “That’s good. How about we ditch that jerk of yours and go somewhere else?”

“Sure. Roger probably won’t remember much in the morning anyways,” Chapel conceded. She started to get her things together, lingering a little in case she changed her mind. “What about you, what’s your life story?”

“The Narada incident wreaked some serious hell on my folks. We got through it.” Janice shrugged. “Seems like it’s affected all of us, especially us Academy kids.”

“I wonder if things would be any different if it hadn’t happened,” Chapel said, absently. She took a few steps back from the sink, adjusting her tight skirt, fighting back the urge to find other excuses. She looked, one last time, at her face in the mirror, with its high cheekbones and masculine structure, wondering if another Chapel would have been born with the right body to match her mind.

“I doubt it.” Janice laughed freely. “We’re more than the sum of whichever lot in life we happen to draw.”


End file.
